Facing Public Controversies IWCA Wiki
Welcome to the Facing Public Controversies IWCA Wiki IWCA: 2014 Facing Public Controversies Out in the Open: Identity Politics Revisited/Remembered/Dissected & The Writing Center Despite our best hopes and valiant attempts, writing centers will never be safe harbors or isolated garrets where writers find necessary sanctuary from the wider currents of society, culture and institution. Writing centers are arenas where the chickens of educational policies and social dysfunction come home to roost (Boquet) and where contemporary identity kits are configured and challenged (Grimm). We will create a space for conversation about contemporary crises as occasions that make writing centers, and those who inhabit them, rife for inscribing as well as contesting how identities perform. Purpose IWCA and writing center professionals continue to need spaces and occasions to sustain on-going conversations about anti-oppression scholarship, criticism, and every day practices in writing centers. The organization still has no official commitment to standing sessions or caucuses that address anti-racism or LGBTQIA issues. Through interactive questioning and guided discussion, this panel believes the IWCA, as a whole, can create steps to address these issues. This platform will serve as one such space to open dialogue in local writing centers with the hopes of reaching a global audience. We will start the conversation with narratives from our own writing centers and invite you all to share your own stories, fostering a stronger writing center community in which we can inform one another about the different crises that occur and participate in larger conversations at the national level. Join the discussion Overview In winter 2013, Rutgers University reacted to media and public pressure and fired its basketball coach after a video captured him abusing his players. During the 2012 presidential campaign, the New Right mobilized against Sandra Fluke. Men of color in New York City continue to be targeted for “Stop & Frisk,” while the Boston marathon bombing created another occasion for politicians to exploit national trauma. These crises are not confined to the public domain of water cooler debate; they pour into spaces where writers seek out mentoring. This roundtable features people committed to the interrogation of identity politics on open display as teachable moments, as Linda Adler-Kassner (2008), Vershawn Young (2007, 2011), and Nancy Grimm (1999, 2006) have advocated. The participants will briefly share how their identities and everyday work around identity politics riff on public controversy in the open and make learning spaces transformative arenas for ongoing dialogue. They will then pose questions to guide substantive interactive discussion about their individual topics and about the means by which the IWCA can work to shift writing centers from regulatory arenas to spaces that facilitate organic social justice activism. Depending on turnout, we imagine, after our brief opening/framing discussions, that we turn to 3-4 small groups with participants to invite participants to share, problem-pose and generalize connections and departures. Before reconvening as a plenary group, we’ll charge small groups with imagining how they would charge or task IWCA to sustain activism and research on critical dialogues around anti-oppression. Latest activity Photos and videos are a great way to add visuals to your wiki. Find videos about your topic by exploring Wikia's Video Library. Category:Browse